Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Hello and welcome to Flaghunters ! It is a privilege to bring to you this powerful insight into playing better Golf. In all my years of being in the game of Golf from competing at a high amateur level, to caddying, teaching, and being a overall Golf geek, I have an insatiable, curiosity driven desire to get down to the bottom of what it takes to truly get better playing the game of Golf that we all unconditionally love. This has been one of the greatest journeys of my life and I am deeply grateful for all that Golf has given me. Thank you for joining me in this incredible journey. This is my ever evolving love letter to Golf. Jesse Perryman P.S. Please Rate, Review and Subscribe !
Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Unlocking Your Golf Potential Through Body Movement and Spiral Lines
Riley Andrews, owner of Elite Golf Schools, explains his approach to teaching golf as a highly individualized process rather than forcing students into a predetermined method.
• Understanding that different PGA Tour players have vastly different swings but achieve similar results
• Teaching based on three "global laws": Woo-Woo (rhythm/tensegrity), Spirals (myofascial lines), and Geometry (club relationships)
• Using fascia and spiral lines to generate effortless power rather than muscle-based movements
• Focusing on ribcage rotation rather than hip rotation as the primary engine of the golf swing
• Recognizing that students need different amounts of information based on their learning style
• Viewing coaching as service where the student's needs come before the coach's ego
• Developing each player's unique "fingerprint" while improving functional movement
• Creating a proximal-to-distal mapping where body rotation leads club movement
• Understanding that all elite players shallow the club but through different methods
• Differentiating between passive release (angular force) and active release (alpha force)
Find Riley Andrews on Instagram and YouTube at @EliteGolfSchools or visit elitegolfofcolorado.com to learn about his golf schools, virtual lessons, and new X Factor Golf online academy.
Thank you to Mizzuno Golf and JumboMax grips !
Hello, this is Jesse Perryman. Welcome to the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. I am your host, along with my friend, my compatriot, my brother from another mother, although he lives all the way in Singapore. His name is Justin Tang. He is a lead instructor at the Tanimera Golf Club. For those who don't know and who are tuning in for the first time, our guest this week is a guy that I didn't really hear of until we recorded. His name is Riley Andrews. He owns golf schools called Elite Golf Schools in Arizona, north Carolina and Colorado. He's at Elite Golf Schools on Instagram.
Speaker 1:I'll make sure to post all of his pertinent information in the show notes so that you can get a hold of him. The short and the long is, folks, is that this guy knows what he's talking about. I'm not going to give it away here on the intro, but I will tell you that if you're searching for a coach who has all of the background information that's needed, who isn't a method coach but knows all the methods, teaches individuals as individuals, he's your guy. I would highly recommend him. He knows what he's talking about. He keeps things simple and if you want complexity, he can simplify it. If you want complication, he's going to simplify it for you. This conversation I thoroughly enjoyed. Shout out to Riley for coming on. I really appreciate your time and your energy into helping folks get better at this game that we love, and at any level. This man can teach anybody, from the beginner to a seasoned tour winner. He is the guy.
Speaker 1:So, once again, his name is Riley Andrews and he is the owner of Elite Golf Schools in Arizona, north Carolina and Colorado. And enjoy folks. And again, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, whatever, feel free to message me. You can get a hold of me through the podcast. Whatever, feel free to message me. You can get ahold of me through the podcast. And also to please remember to rate, review and subscribe. And we are. I did mention this last time, but we are going on to YouTube. And cheers everyone. Have a great week. Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Fly Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to another edition where we beat up on golf instructors. Actually, just kidding, say hello to my friend Justin Tang, co-host, lead instructor at the Tanamera Golf Club in Singapore, and our guest today is Riley Andrews. He is the owner of Elite Golf Schools in Arizona, north Carolina and Colorado. Beautiful Riley, thanks for joining us and embarking on this beautiful conversation you have.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm super excited to uh one get to know you guys a little bit better and then hopefully some folks that listen in they can learn a thing or two and help them play some better golf. How about it?
Speaker 3:here, here, yeah, hey, thanks, riley, we finally made it happen. I'll just say this right off the bat to get our listeners attention. If you don't know riley, and our listeners' attention If you don't know Riley Andrews, you should. And if you don't know Riley Andrews, think of him as the George Gankers of the desert, and his stock price is only going to get higher and higher from here. I said it here.
Speaker 2:Justin, you're already going down it, man. I love it. I love it. I'll give you your royalty check after this podcast. How about?
Speaker 3:that After 25 years of digging in the weeds of golf instruction, I hope my words carry weight. And it's not something I say lightly. It's not something I say about every instructor.
Speaker 2:Dude, I really, really appreciate that man. Justin, that means a ton to me. Thank you.
Speaker 3:So for the next three hours you've got to live up to it.
Speaker 2:Perfect, let's go Lock and load.
Speaker 3:Let's do it. So just share with our listeners. How did you get into golf coaching, all the and uh, you know the background of sporting background.
Speaker 2:Let's go yeah, man, uh, you know I was fortunate because I actually grew up in a really small town on the western part of colorado, in a town called montrose, colorado, population of about 12 000 folks. Um, and my dad, uh, was a really high level athlete when he was a kid, introduced me to every single sport under the sun. As much as I wanted to be a jock, I sure tried to be, and played baseball and basketball and football and golf and just everything you know, and dad was a, was a high school football coach, high school baseball coach. So my first loves were those team-type sports, right. And then my aunt actually introduced me to golf, brought me to a driving range. I still remember that very first ball that I hit, justin, it's like golf has been that big, it's had that big of an impact on my life. It's like golf has been that big of like it's had that big of an impact on my life. And she took me out there when I was 10 or 11 years old, something like that.
Speaker 2:I'm an only child as well, so golf was kind of cool because I could go to the golf course and work on my game, and I have very much an obsessive type of a personality, right, so I would go to the course all day like sun up, sun down, and that was my home, a little ways from home.
Speaker 2:And so golf just like filled that need in my life to obsess over something. And now I'm just a freaking full on golf nerd and I can't there's not enough information out there for me to like try to digest and understand. And I think that's a cool part of our industry right now is there's just so many, so many numbers and there's so much like study on health and there's so much um, you know, study on this and that and we have all this technology now and so it's all just great food, you know. You just get to eat it and go okay, how does this actually make sense? And so I've been doing that um for about 14 years now, maybe 15 years now, coaching full-time. Uh was a playing professional for about three years with very, very little like success in that arena. Uh played my college golf at at University of Colorado and UCCS University of Colorado, colorado Springs. So that's me in a nutshell, right there.
Speaker 3:So when you, when you transited from being a high level amateur to the 12, to the pay for play ranks like, what do you think was the main difference and why were you not able to sustain your performance from the amateur?
Speaker 2:rings? That's such a great question. Um, I think it's probably multiple different reasons, uh, but if I were to hierarchy, it like the main reason. Um, you know, just I was lucky because I had such great mentors. Um, one of my main mentors, doug wary, was my coach from the time that I was 14 years old. He's still my best friend to this day. He's our coach in North Carolina and our North Carolina location. So it makes me happy that I get to hang with my mentor, my bestie, all the time.
Speaker 2:But, you know, I think I just was so entranced with watching everybody else and trying to figure out why their games were so great that I kind of eventually just lost attention on my own game in a funny way, like I would go talk to guys about. You know, I'd find guys that could chip it really well and just ask them questions. Just probably annoyed the absolute heck out of them. But who cares? I just was interested, right. Same thing with putting, same thing with full swing.
Speaker 2:I came more from a, a background where there was, you know, I think a lot of coaches do this inadvertently and it wasn't really Doug that did this, but there's there some of my coaches would go. This is the only way to swing the golf club, and so I grew up under that type of an idea as a youngster, as a as a kid, um, and so I I almost looked at everybody else as like dude, you're dumb if you're not doing the things that you should be doing, because this is the only way you know. And so when I finally went out there on and tried to pay, like play the career, and all these guys that were just kicking the hell out of me, that all looked way different than me. So it was like this massive question is just like this like why does that work? Work, my stuff's not working.
Speaker 2:I thought this was gospel, so, but that works, hmm, so it's like this, really like this time of a ton of curiosity for me. So I just started looking and asking questions and still ask questions to this day. You know what I mean. Does that kind of answer that question?
Speaker 3:I guess yeah, yeah, I. I guess I guess you know if I would have summarized that you went out to a world that was much, much bigger than the one that you were in, and then you realize that there's more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, and I think it's quite.
Speaker 3:It's quite easy to get lost in the weeds of technique until you see something that you've never seen before, but that's whooping your ass. Can you imagine Jim Furyk's high school or college competitors getting beat by him with that swing? Yeah, I said this to Mark Immelman before Everyone wants Jim's career, but they don't want his swing. Yeah, I said this to Mark Immelman before Everyone wants Jim's career, but they don't want his swing.
Speaker 2:Isn't that interesting too, because they go hand in hand.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like wet and water. You can't say, hey, I want to swim, but I don't want to get wet. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's 100% right. But I think through that, justin. I have just decided, especially now in my career, that the player's ability to control their golf ball is purely through their technique. But there's a lot of different ways to balance that out, and you see it all over the place on the LPGA tour, on the PGA tour, on live, at every single level. You see all different ways to get it done.
Speaker 3:Yes, and Jesse and myself we have this conversation all the time. Pull up the last tournament scoreboard. Look at the top 25 players. All of them look different. But here we are as coaches, we try to teach the same thing.
Speaker 3:I think Homer Kelly of the golfing machine said this there are samenesses and then there are differences. A sameness would be every golf swing has a grip, every golf swing has a backswing. But how you grip it, how you take your backswing, that's your own thing and it's got to match. And I think a lot of coaches use matchups as kind of a cop-out because they've not necessarily done the studying of how technique actually works, and then kind of cobble stuff together. Sure, a mismatched back swing can work well with a suboptimal grip, but are we doing the students any favor just because he's hitting the ball solid and kind of straight, but is his distance maximized? Not really so I think I think there are two facets to this. Right, you've got to know the technical details and you've got to know the player Like is he ready to take the next step up, or are we going to unravel his entire golf game just because we think he should be able to hit the ball 10 yards further with this change.
Speaker 2:That's the question every single session, isn't it? Yeah, you know, it really is, um. And on that note, man, I think that's what's so cool about homer's golfing machine is there's hitters and there's swingers. He's differentiating it right, like in his language, um. But then you go down that rabbit hole and it's like you see matt fitzpatrick grip it with the lead hand and the way that he does super strong, super pronated, and then you've got morakawa right next to him in the day, right next to him, super weak, way more supinated in the grip. So who's correct? Who who's right, who's wrong?
Speaker 3:Like what Homer would say the ball, let the ball be the judge, the ultimate judge, of a golf swing. You know, my dad used to be a high-level karateka. There's always this saying in martial arts you think your martial arts is the best thing since life's? There's only one way to find out let's get on the street, let's get into a fight. If it's a fight, there are no rules. If there's a rule, it's a sport. So you only find out on the arena of tournament golf, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And the president of our local PGA used to say this yeah, justin, you can play all the golf swing you want, but at the end of the day we want to know what's your golf score. That's all we care about. That really hit home. And that that's always a reminder for myself, like whatever I do to a student, it's got to lead to one thing lower scores. Sure, you do get some weird cats that say hey, coach, I can hit a fade repeatedly, but I really want to hit a draw. I'm not really a serious golfer, it doesn't matter if I shoot 80 or 90. I've got a weird cat like that Fine, he paid for the lesson, he wants to hit a draw, I'll serve him a draw that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's part of the joy, right, like. You know coaching, you know amateurs and they're, you know, as soon as we started posting a little bit more like on our youtube and social media and what have you? You just I didn't know how many freaking golf nerds there were out there. Like, honestly, I thought I was like one-on-one. Yeah, jesse, right, like there are so many guys out there that just want to understand how things work with who cares about performance. I just want to know how the golf swing works. And they just nerd out on it. And it's awesome, because I'm one of them too.
Speaker 2:So it's fun to hang out with a similar homie, you know. But there's, that's a special kind of guy, right, justin. You've got tour players that are doing it for a living. Then you've got juniors that want nothing more than to play at their dream school and beyond, but they're shooting 80 right now at the local level. So how do you like every single student that you have it's serving up, as you said, justin, like the right information that's going to fulfill their spirit as a human within our game.
Speaker 3:I think, as coaches, I see ourselves as being a five-star restaurant in, say, vegas, in the Vegas Strip. We want to serve the best buffet out there. We want to have everything, but we want also want to make sure that you know where to go for what you like. Yes, we can't have you eating everything, you're gonna throw up. But if you your preference is for italian, look ital, italian section is there. There's seafood guides there, a dessert guide way in front or at the back, as the case may be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can always tell a great golf coach, justin, when they throw out analogies like that. Bro, there's always analogies, right, we always got to paint like analogies. I also love that you throw out food analogies, because that's all I freaking talk about too. So great, we got a commonality homie.
Speaker 3:I remember when I was in Arizona in 2005, I was introduced to peach cobbler pie. That was good. We don't have that in Singapore. Send me to heaven and pecan pie. So so, the guy that I learned from in 2005, I'm not sure you know him chuck evans. Okay, chuck evans, yeah, a golfing machine. Uh, he was the, the lead guy back then, the head of uh instruction that. So, riley, I want to go back.
Speaker 3:Like 15 minutes ago you mentioned something about yourself and that's another trait of really elite coaches that I observe over the years Obsessive. The elite coaches that I know they are at this point, where they go, I will never know enough. It's like, dude, you freaking, studied 20 years under Yoda and you say you don't know enough. Like, great coaches are like that. They are always on this path of seeking, but yet, at the same time, they are great appliers, for a lack of better term. So, to me, when data, so data collection is one thing. When data is organized, it becomes information. When information is understood, it becomes knowledge. But at the elite level, elite coaches have the wisdom to apply is understood, it becomes knowledge. But at the elite level, elite coaches have the wisdom to apply the information, the knowledge, to their players.
Speaker 3:And when I look at the stuff that you put out on YouTube in our conversation. I see that. I see this wisdom of like okay, today you only need this. Maybe next week you give some guy more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's so funny. We're getting ready to onboard a wonderful young man from Minnesota to come down to our Arizona staff. His name is Justin Bland, great, great kid. Can't wait to have him on board with us starting in September.
Speaker 2:And we were just talking about the same thing today, where you've got to be able to read the amount of information that's proper for every single student that you're coaching. Some folks it's one concept and you can tell that that's going to be plenty, and then it becomes a uh, an observed practice where you're just letting them know if they're in system or out with that one concept and other people can take seven different concepts and they're going to give me more. And it just depends on the person, right. Their learning styles are different, the whole bit is just different. So you've got to be able to, like chameleon, your way in and have an understanding of the amount of information that the student can take. And then also, how do they digest information? The best Is it from articulation showing, shoving them around in space? There's a lot of different ways to convey information, but you're always trying to figure out how your student is is best going to be served I like the term you use observe practice.
Speaker 3:Early on in my career I used to feel really bad when guys come to me. I give them a concept and then they like, they look happy, and I'm like, okay, let me give you three more because you paid for an hour. But these days I'm like, look, I'm still doing a job here. It is just that I'm not giving him an extra concept, but I'm still doing my work here. I'm making sure he's executing the concept that I gave him earlier. He seems happy. So so be it. Yep, yep, 100. I love that, love it.
Speaker 3:And you talked. You talked about articulation showing. Some guys are visual learners, some guys are, I guess, auditory learners. Some guys you basically need to yank them in a place, and I think, as a coach, we want to use all three right, especially when it comes to say something like teaching ground reaction forces. Some guys need to feel what a lateral shift is like, maybe they need to feel what rotational motion is like, and some guys maybe they need to hear woo-woo, uh-uh, uh sounds. Some guys need to see Riley doing something, and that's something that you do, so so very well thanks, buddy.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, and I mean that, shoot, that's exactly what we're talking about before hopping on air here, right is like human communication is so it's so funny like sometimes a sound conveys the information appropriately, um, and they digest it and they're like, oh, I get it now right. And, by the way, I've got to pay homage to another one of my mentors. I, I didn't come up with woo, woo, that ain't me, that's one of my main mentors, luke bracky. Oh, you know, I know, luke, yeah, and, and Luke is just the freaking, the goat dude. He is one of, again, one of my best friends. He is one of the greatest people on earth but one of the smartest people that I've ever met as well, and I owe him a ton when it comes to my understanding of how things move when it comes to the golf swing, and so woo-woo, that's a Luke term, dude, that I stole from him and I used in my own coaching. So that's a luke, right.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, sometimes, just, you know, like grunts, oh, hit me a freaking ball, like it's like, okay, I kind of understand what kind of ball we're going to be hitting right now. You know, it's funny how it? You know. You just, we're just, in a way, coaches. I think really good coaches are artists, because we're trying to paint as best as we possibly can the move, whatever you want to call it, the movement, the concept, the mapping, so that they digest it and they execute on. That is again, we know as high level coaches. We understand when a player does this aired with that, we know what's going to happen with the ball, we know Right. So it's like just shoving them around to the point where, like okay, they're in that space and now it's just like. Now we're like stumper after stumper and it's like, oh, that ball is real. That ball is real and that's where great scores come from. Is the your ability to control your golf ball through your action period?
Speaker 3:you know, you mentioned the importance of communication. Sometimes it's almost like trying to influence a guy to buy into the concepts that were going to foist upon them, and I think one of the most difficult concepts to get through to students would be this that what they feel is completely different from what they see on camera. So I'm pretty sure it's the same for you, I'll tell. I'll tell. So. Recently I had another. I had an online student. He's like inside out, by what 12 degrees? I said you just go ahead, you make a filthy over the top swing Ball, should feel like it's going to start 10 yards left of your target and then slice it to 30 yards, right? He's like okay, it's the straightest shot of his life Lesson done at that point. Exactly and you also use this term that coaches are artists. It's really about painting an image in a person's head, isn't it? And would you say that a lot of higher handicap players can't actually see themselves from a third person perspective making a decent or fast swing? They just don't have that concept.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, dude, and I think a ton, a ton of that. Because what do you do when you're brand new? You try to seek things out, whether it's YouTube videos, you go see a local pro or whatever, and there's so much. Again, it's our communication as an industry that I think we fail in a lot of ways. Like if I lined up five different people and I said show me width in your backswing, I'm going to see five different actions. You're going to have people extending their elbows and all kinds of different stuff to try to like show width, have a wide backswing. What does that mean? It's like the same thing. Somebody starts kind of looking nice and you're like oh dude, you just need better rhythm. Just show me a golf swing with good tempo.
Speaker 2:Like dude that's like me going okay, show me a golf swing with good tempo, like dude, that's like me going okay. Well, your through swing looks awesome, but, dude, we just need a good backswing. Show me a good backswing Like it's just what is that? What does that mean, right? So I think a lot of like the plane, for example the swing plane.
Speaker 3:Which plane A.
Speaker 2:Boeing plane or or Bombardier, Exactly, Exactly, Right. So it's like all that. The freaking plane is is we draw a line through the player's shoulder, through the club head swing plane, and then people just try Again. That's a quantitative map. I can put it on that plane six ways to Sunday. Which way is the right one for me? You can just shove it back there with your arms. You could turn and pick it up. It gets on the plane in several different ways, but we never describe as an industry where the club should move relative to something else. How does the club move relative to my chest? So then where would my chest need to move for that golf club to swing away from target and towards it? So it becomes a totally different picture in somebody's mind rather than well, here's a swing plane, put it on the swing plane at P3, it should be right there at 43 degrees. I can put it. There's several different ways. All that quantitative bs dude, it don't work unless you have a map it's, it's all.
Speaker 3:It's almost like we expect the 18 handicapper to go on his back saying like, okay, that's 43 degrees. Like would you even know? You can't even feel it. You don't have that level of proprioception. And even if you did, I dare challenge any tour pro on tour trying to think of angles on the backswing and try to hit the ball. Not going to work. That's a surefire way of losing your tour car 100%. Start thinking of positions. You're going to start shooting in the mid to high 70s.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:That's the fastest way to destroy it. So as a fellow golf nerd and a student myself, I'm applauding you two right now for saying that, because when you try to homogenize everybody, I think that we're going to lose more players. Players are just going to walk away, they're just going to quit the game. Same mold, I mean. I think of how tragic it would have been if Jim Furyk would have went to somebody else other than his dad or Lee Trevino. I mean, you could, you could. I mean how about? How about if Randy Smith did not raise Scotty Scheffler? Scotty Scheffler is like twice the better ball striker than anybody on planet Earth right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean he literally hits it twice as good.
Speaker 1:His nearest guy is Rory and Rory just completed the career Grand Slam and he's won a bunch this year, a bunch of big events. Scotty hits it twice as good as he does. How's Scotty doing? He's doing good, but how would he be doing if Randy just let him be him?
Speaker 1:You know, I mean it takes a discerning eye and I applaud you two. It takes a real discerning eye to be able to quickly see what somebody's strengths are and you get them to identify their intention. How do they want to play? I mean you mentioned it, riley, at the beginning of the conversation. You know a junior player wanting to go to his or her college of choice and playing, you know, on any of the various tours. I mean that's pretty solid intention. Or somebody breaking 80, or you know even somebody who wants to go out and play on the weekends and not embarrass themselves. That's an intention. There's a methodology to teach this person, all of them and I think it's really up to the instructor and it's a massive responsibility and something that shouldn't be taken lightly whatsoever. I look at you guys like doctors. If you go to a bad doctor, you are effed. If you go to a bad golf instructor, you're going to feel about as bad as you went to a regular doctor.
Speaker 3:But here's the difference, jesse? Here's the difference the doctor will get sued for malpractice, riley and myself won't. This is true, and Riley, I think I speak for yourself also. The accolades that Jesse are throwing at us are nice, but when we were first starting out, there were cadavers, which are all hidden somewhere. Now we made our mistakes, but I think I think where Riley and I come from. We come from a place where, hey, you know what? This is not the right thing to do. But teach me, I'm willing to be taught.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and, jesse man, I love that, and thanks so much for the kind words again. But at the end of the day and I think, justin, I'll speak for you We'll just keep speaking for each other. Today, we come from a playing background and we're competitors at heart. I'm I'm not a researcher at heart. Like now, what I'm always trying to do is I want to live vicariously through my athletes, like I want them to go beat it up, like I remember what it was like to tee it up on day one, like let's go, let's go frigging mesh, mesh it up right now, right, like, let's go do it. And so everything that, every single word that comes out of my mouth, is with the intention for them to be able to feel empowered Confidence comes from that and they're able to make like committed decisions and committed swings, rep after rep, so that they they move the needle in their favor for being able to perform and get results. And so I very selfishly, by the way live through them. So when they win, man, I feel like I do too. And it's like this thing that I know how hard you have to work in order to number one, put yourself in contention at like super high levels. And then two, how, how to, how to push through that and actually get a w is like, oh my gosh, that's everything.
Speaker 2:That's why we play the game from a junior perspective, collegiate perspective, professional perspective and now as a coach man, man, I won't beat everybody up, but it's just with the players that I'm fortunate enough to be able to work with. So it's still this really competitive. It comes from ego. I'm fine in saying that, no problem, but I'm a very competitive person at heart and so now I'm just working through these guys and it's the greatest challenge in the world, right, plus, like it's kind of easy, your own game, like, okay, I kind of you get to know your tendencies, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:Every single one of these athletes has different tendencies, different ways of thinking, different, uh, different ways of approaching the game and getting to know them at a really intimate level and knowing the right diagnosis for them. Like to take the doctor analogy again, I don't want to go in with a broken arm and they amputate my frigging leg, like maybe the wrong diagnosis, you know so. And yeah, justin, like how many times have we screwed up in the past? Yeah, we absolutely have. Man, you learn from those screw upsups. But it always comes from like, okay, we're coming from the right perspective and that we want our athletes to succeed and show results and grow as people, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean, I'm going to interject here and say, like, as a student, that's what I would want you. You know, I would want my coach to be in the trenches with me. I would want my coach behind me like a fellow dog. You know, I wouldn't want a coach that would be only interested in showing me numbers or what my GFR readings are on, whatever. You know what my GFR readings are on, whatever, uh, you know what, what my track man numbers are. I mean not, I'm not trying to demonize that stuff. It has its place. Um, but you know, for those that are listening to this conversation right now and you're looking for a coach, um, the, I would say that that's a, that's a pretty big quality having a coach behind you that wants you to win like, really wants you to win Like on the golf course, not just looking good so they can post onto their freaking Instagram or YouTube. That, to me, is bullshit, or not just trying to collect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or just trying to collect, or whatever. I think that you should find somebody who's interested, like wants to see you win on the golf course, whatever that win is.
Speaker 3:I want to say that if the coach is more pissed off than you are when you shoot a bad number, that's probably the guy to stick with.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He cares. Good call, he cares yeah good call Justin. Exactly cares. Good call, good call, justin. Hey, people in general make learning the golf swing look so difficult, but you make it look so, so easy. What's your advice for young coaches just trying to get into the coaching business? What would you say to them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the first thing is exactly what Jesse brought up is truly, if you are, you know what. This is so funny. I'm going to answer this in a weird way and hopefully it makes sense. This is so funny. I'm going to answer this in a weird way and hopefully it makes sense. I tried to look up the proper term for what it is that we are as coaches at elite golf schools and I'm looking up coach and I'm looking up mentor, I'm looking up instructor and they all just don't quite fit. I don't even know if there's a term that embodies everything, but the definition I think has to start with like we're we're in a service industry. Period that means that our student is more important than I am. Period, like no questions asked. Okay, so if you're not coming from that spirit, then it's probably not the right arena for you.
Speaker 3:Oh, so, it's not important so it's not important for us to tell the students how much we know oh, that's, that's way secondary, yeah, way secondary.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I get the sarcasm Like, and there's a lot of coaches out there that like to do that. Which, again, is that, maybe that's okay to some extent because it can show some amount of credibility, that you know some definitions of some really cool terms, totally fine, right. But if you're still not, if, if you're not I think it's pretty easy to smell out of somebody actually intends for someone to really succeed because of their leadership, mentorship, coaching, whatever you want to call it I don't know the term, but it really is like, look this person, like how special is it that somebody is coming to you for help, that, like in coaching, they're asking for help, help me, help me. So your first job is to do everything in your power to help them, even if it's in some little stupid hobby like golf. Right, it's not doctor, I don't have my MD, I'm not saving lives, but it's so interesting that a little hobby or a sport like golf can really like when, when you're playing well, how, how enriched and joyful your life can be in that moment when you're playing well.
Speaker 2:Or even if it's one shot that you're like, dude, that six iron on 18 was so ridiculous, like I can't wait for tomorrow, like that's a special thing because that provides people hope. And if you're hopeful as a person, man, you've got spirit, you've got all the things. So I think a lot of what we do is just inspiring and using communication to give people hope. And then, on top of that, next to that next is can you diagnose at higher and higher levels to actually produce results after the? I give a shit about you temperature gauge, right, you do those two things and you're constantly chasing those two things. You are going to have an excellent career, an unbelievable career, in coaching and mentorship and instruction, whatever you want to call what we do.
Speaker 3:That's such an amazing one. So the student is the most important. Give hope and then the last one, diagnose and prescribe a solution. You have an outstanding career.
Speaker 2:Outstanding and keep chasing both of those items.
Speaker 3:So who were your coaching influences when you go into the coaching business?
Speaker 2:So Doug Wary was my main mentor. Again, he's still I mean honestly, justin like I. You know I've got a very young family at this point. I've got little five-year-old twin girls at home and an amazing wife, Sarah. So I'm like I, you know, I've got a very young family at this point.
Speaker 3:I've got little five-year-old twin girls at home and an amazing life era.
Speaker 2:So I'm like dude, life can't get any better because they're they're my main priority, right. So I have, realistically, like two best friends and then a ton of other friends, right, like all my students that I'm able to coach. I would absolutely say that like gosh, they're all great friends of mine at heart, but like my two longest relationships, friendship wise, uh, one is Mitch. Mitch Buckner, who's one of my best buddies from my college team, and then Doug Ware. So I think a lot of.
Speaker 2:I think often about Doug. Um, he's still a mentor of mine in so many ways, and the reason is not because he was my golf coach. He was my golf coach and still is my golf coach, but he cares so much about me and my family and I care so much about him and his family and so he's my ride or die, right, just like Mitch is my ride or die, so Doug and the reason I bring that up like who's my mentor? Who are my influences? Doug was number one and that's where I got my culture from, where the student is number one. I got it directly from him because I saw it every day. He ran this place like the, the. The spot that I'm in right now used to be called jake's academy and I bought that business from doug, where it oh okay so like so jake, jake ward was was Doug's mentor.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:When he was a young man um, and same kind of relationship. So I'm sure that he learned that from Jake and Doug also learned under um Arnold Palmer. He was in charge of running Arnold Palmer golf academy and we all know AP. That's the guy right when it comes to like you do things for the right reasons, period. Like Doug was influenced heavily because of AP and Doug has influenced me heavily because of Doug, and the reason that you do things is because you're born to give back. Like that's why you're here, right. Like that's why you're here right. So you better do a great job of that and providing more for people and make the world a better place, because you have the opportunity to do that. Like. End of discussion, right? So every one of us myself included as coaches at Elite, that is our main job Number one are we gonna dish out 100%, going to dish out a hundred percent tour players? No, because that's not. That's not our decision. Like, not everybody. Every one of our juniors wants to be a tour player.
Speaker 2:But I will say this every single one of our kids that comes through this academy, they will learn what it takes to be successful in life, and golf has so many parallels with that. It's ridiculous. Right Like to be a good player in golf is always earned. You could be like, potentially a good center in basketball and then transition right over and be a great tight end. There's not any other sport out there that transitions directly into golf. You've got to earn the skillset to become a great tight end. There's not any other sport out there that transitions directly into golf. You've got to earn the skill set to become a great player, and that takes work and understanding and study.
Speaker 2:And so now, if you become a great player in our game, you can take that same pathway and apply it to any other area in your game and know what it takes to actually be successful. And that's why our academy here is really so special. It doesn't. It's not because we're dishing out the tour player cards left and right, because, again, that's not our job. The kids that want that. They'll make it happen and our job is to provide keys to them so that they can actually succeed in that arena. But I mean, dude, every single one of our kids coming out and being tour players that's not in the cards, that's not what they want, but they are going to be successful here because of our mentorship.
Speaker 3:That's such a great discussion. I think when you look across different industries, different arenas, you look at the high performers. All of them share similar traits, and kudos to you and your team for teaching life skills. I think that's talked about a lot but not done enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's mud, mud, right. You're in there with the kid. You're in there with the student. You're in there with student. They're more important than you, so them being successful is a direct reflection of of how you painted for them. If they're not successful, it's on the coach. You didn't inspire them in the right way. And do we fail? Of course we do, but we've got to learn from it so that we're more successful in the next discussion with that kiddo, or any person for that matter.
Speaker 3:You know what, like Dr Carol Dweck, it's not failure, it's feedback, and we take that and we keep getting 1% better every day.
Speaker 2:Love that, love that.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about swing philosophy. What are the global laws? Let's give it to our listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, baby, okay. So global law number one. So this is how we articulate it. Again, luke, I love you. I stole this directly from you. Global law number one Woo, woo. And I'll define these a little bit better. Global law number one woo-woo. Global law number two spirals. Global law number three geometry. So the reason that we've named them in the ways that we have is because we want the question in response to that what does that mean? And then we get to define it. So woo, woo, is rhythm a tensegrity model? If we want to be fancy, tensegrity comes from the word tension, so it's tension management in any system, right? You watch any athlete like Marion Jones. You're like, there's this like cool, like eye test. We're like, ooh, that stuff looks right. You watch most tour players You're like man that passes the eye test, that looks like. You watch Barry Sanders run, you're like, hmm, I like that, right. So Tenserity model woo-woo, rhythm, tempo. That's the general definition of it.
Speaker 1:Just as a contrast, charles Barkley, no, woo woo.
Speaker 3:In case our listeners were wondering what we're talking about, because there's no video for our podcast. At least they can imagine Charles Barkley next to Adam Scott.
Speaker 2:Adam has woo, woo, Charles doesn't for now, exactly, and it's getting better though, isn't it? There's not the like, then go again right, so woo-woo Tissue, so muscle fascia, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, all tissue right, organs, tissue.
Speaker 3:Can you go back and just explain the differences for our listeners? The difference between muscles and fascia.
Speaker 2:Great. So my study of this when I was a kid I took kinesiology in college, right so and it was like aggressive man, we would have a cadaver on the table and we would dissect, and the way that it was instructed is you would learn that all of the 627 muscles in the body learn their names and where they go, and when that muscle contracts it does this, when it relaxes it does that. So inevitably you look at movement as a bunch of levers and pulleys and we move like robots, and that's not the case. When you watch Mike Tyson throw a punch, it looks like there's these ripples, these waves through all of his like tissue in his body and you're like, ooh, shit, that looks right, right, like you see this movement. Um, and so what?
Speaker 2:What muscle is is obviously the individual muscle fascia. Like if you eat chicken, you get your chicken breast out and you've got that like layering, kind of that clear layering, over the top of the muscle, right, and you end up just kind of like carving it off and peeling it off and putting it aside. That's fascia. Fascia is pretty much a substance, a balloony substance that encapsulates muscle and then goes into the tissue, into the joint or into the tendon, excuse me, into the joint, into the next tendon, over the muscle, into the tendon, into the joint, into the tendon, and that keeps going. So it's like this massive highway system through our body and what's really cool, so 627 various muscles are difficult to one remember and then also know how they fire, right. Plus, if I go, hey, joe schmo, fire your terry's major please, they're gonna go huh, what I don't have, you don't know. Right, it's hard to communicate that way. Fascia, there are eight, eight major or main myofascial lines in the body and they, they look like highways and so it makes it easier.
Speaker 2:Plus, like fascia, how, how it moves, it's almost rubber bandy in a way, right, and this is where tensegrity comes from. So, like this is also this is a fun topic. We could, we could talk nine hours for this. So if I take a rubber band and I go and I elongate it, so I stretch it, I pull it from side to side, we would all agree that that that rubber band is tense, it is gain tension, it's tensegrity is elevated because of that act.
Speaker 2:So in our bodies when we're elongating tissue lines, so for instance the spiral line, and as I'm yapping here, you can, you can absolutely hop onto the Google machine and just Google myofascial spiral line. And even if you just typed in spiral line, you'll see this dork standing there with this beautiful blue ribbon right around him in a spiral manner and just envision that blue ribbon as a rubber band and so you can see how that rubber band would elongate and gain tension because of that act. And the only way that we gain tension in those lines is by that tissue being relaxed. So most of the time we hear this all the time in golf, right? Oh, your golf swings too tense, dude, we need a load of tension. There's players that I go're there's like not enough tension in their swing. We need to gain tension, and tension comes from elongation and that comes from the relaxation of tissue.
Speaker 3:I think there's just to wet our listeners appetite. Can you, can you go straight into why learning to move via the spiral lines, the fascia triggering the stress shortened cycle, is so, so important for them to pound the ball further and straighter? Okay, that's, that's awesome. Okay, that's going to get their attention right there. And then Okay.
Speaker 2:So imagine number one good grief, justin. All, right, so these myofascial lines right, we get the spiral line and we're saying that what we want to do is we want to elongate that tissue. Okay, so let's just take like a small, small movement here. So if I go bicep curl to show off big guns, right. So the tissue in the bicep has been activated, it's compressed, the tissue in the tricep has gained tension because it's elongated to manage that movement in the biceps, right. So there's our stretch-shorten cycle right there and it all equals out, okay. So if I do that, let's say that instead what I'm trying to do is open up my chest a bit, so, like if I'm throwing a baseball, I would elongate that arm line which there's a myofascial arm line. You can look that one up next, right next to the spiral line, and so if I want to throw a baseball hard, I need all of that tissue to elongate, to gain tension, so that then I can take that whole system and go whoosh and compress it back down and that's the energy to throw with. So imagine a rubber band now that runs through your entire body. If I'm six feet tall, the spiral line is like 15 feet, 15 feet and I'm taking that entire rubber band and elongating that whole 15-foot line and then from there I can take that whole line and then compress it. So, so all that activates.
Speaker 2:What kind of load and energy can I put into the tool, the golf club? It's like free speed, but what's dope? Super freaking, super freaking healthy, because you're distributing energy throughout the entirety of a myofascial line, not individual joint groups, so you can have more safe speed and energy. And at the same time, if I elongate that tissue line, let's say I just let go, like I've got this rubber band and I just pull on it, so it gets taut and I let go of one side, I get free speed, but I also get precision because it's going to unload in the same direction, the same way every single time. So I gain health of movement and I can go as fast as I want throughout that because I'm distributing all that energy, energy throughout that entire myofascial line. Then I get easy, free speed and I get precision. What the hell else do you want in your golf swing? That's everything. It checks every box.
Speaker 3:That's why skinny little 13-year-olds can sometimes pound the ball 280. Unconsciously, they just figured out how to use it and I think a useful way to think about fascia lines and the stretch shorten cycles this. If I said to you, riley, I want you to jump and touch the ceiling, you could do it one of two, well three, ways. You could sink right into a deep squat, wait for a couple seconds and then try to spring up. You could just try to jump from a standing position or you could very rapidly just drop your hips a couple inches and then burst right up. That would be stretch-shorten cycle.
Speaker 3:Yes yes, exactly, and where you and your team are so good at. Just by looking at the YouTube videos, you've come up with so many different ways of activating the various spiral lines, depending on the student's problem, to help them become a better swinger of the golf club.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we're attempting to do every single session and if there's a, you know, a systems-based approach, if you will, that that we kind of abide under, it is that it's our three global laws, the period like there are some players that we want to hit like a little bit higher block draw so we get a little bit more out of the golf ball, and then there's other players that we want the launch to be down and primarily cutting. Maybe we even like like soften some of the, the ROC, the rate of closure in the club face for that particular player. But we can match that stuff up. But the big thing is like, how does the body like spirals, my pelvis, my rib cage, primarily like, if I know how to marry those two together, then I'm, I have an understanding of like, how to like control the spiral movement and that's always a supportive role or plays a supportive role to the arms, hands and club hitting and really, if you hit enough golf balls you're going to kind of figure out the bottom.
Speaker 2:You do need to hit a lot of golf balls to become a great player. I don't care right, there's no magic blue pill. Ooh, I know spiral movement I never miss again. If you develop that, by the way, justin, you call me and we'll go in together. So it's like, and my body support the arms and the hands and the club through the hit. So the hit is way more manageable from an athletic perspective, a sensory perspective. I can put pressure on the ball in different levels. I can. I can easily manage low point. I can manage the club and its path and its face, like if that's done kind of from an intuitive perspective because of the mapping of the of your golf swing and it makes it easier down there. Okay, we're great and at the end of the day, that's, I feel, like a coach's role is. We're more like the bumpers and bowling where we're just given direction to the player and the player's the one that needs to send strikes. Right, that's all we're doing. That's the relationship between student and coach, right?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna ask the question that our listeners would probably want me to what's the main spiral line if they want to hit further?
Speaker 2:what is what the the the main spiral line.
Speaker 3:Give them that one thing that they can do after listening to you Get under their range and try to hit the ball further.
Speaker 2:So number one when we first start introducing spirals to players, here's a good way to just generally take a look at this and I know this is going to freak people out, but don't worry, I get this all the time. People look at me like I got nine hits sometimes, until it like kind of comes full circle. So your pelvis's main job in the golf swing is to stay underneath the rib cage and it'll stay dropped in more or less. So the pelvis's main job is not rotation, hip rotation, rotate your hips. Right, we hear it all the time, like from when we were youngsters. It's like you gotta fire the hips. No, you do not. The hips are to stay underneath so that the rib cage can rotate.
Speaker 2:So if you're rotating the rib cage on top of the pelvis, will the pelvis rotate to some degree? Yes, it absolutely will. However, what we'd like to see for the most part is that the pelvis is being tugged on by the rib cage, so the rib cage rotates. Eventually it'll tug on that pelvis, so the pelvis reacts in rotation, but it's always trying to stay dropped under and underneath the player. So in both directions in the away swing I'd rotate my rib cage. Pelvis stays under me In transition.
Speaker 2:We're just going to look to drop the pelvis just like you would like in a typical squat pattern, like if you have a squat bar on your back. You're not going to pitch the knees forward, the knees will kind of stay in there and the pelvis drops back and down behind you. That's going to load up your posterior spiral line without you even trying to go load the posterior spiral line. Just the pelvis's active dropping in a squatting pattern will help to load that. Once you do that in transition, you just rotate the ribs through. So the whole mapping would be rotate ribs in backswing, drop pelvis in transition, rotate ribs in through swing. That's how you load up the spiral line the easiest.
Speaker 3:That's quite simple, Instead of having to think of numbers where the hands should be going. Here's the thing If Jesse and I were to run through that swing map, we would have our own unique look because of our individual anatomical proportions 100%, 100%, and this is where I tend to stick my foot in my mouth right now.
Speaker 2:But I tend to disagree with, like TPI in a lot of ways, and the reason being is is they'll look at a player's femur length and then tend to decide what type of player they need to be whether they're a jumper or rotator, what have you?
Speaker 2:And I get it because you're going to take a bunch of averages and you take tour averages and whatnot. Like you know, swing box, ai does this, gears does this. Um, you know, golf tech does this to to a certain degree, where they'll just take tour averages and then just try to shove everybody kind of in that box and while that can help to create just a general kind of a shape of a golf swing not saying it's bad, I'm just saying from a standpoint of that qualitative mapping right, like I can turn my chest, just like you said, and there's a few different ways. I mean the rib cage is interesting. There's three different types of ribs, so how the ribs interact is like an interesting way, like an interesting discussion, right. But if I just in general rotate the ribs, I'm going to move the golf club away from the target.
Speaker 2:Like the arms, kind of no shit. They attach into the rib cage, not the pelvis. So if I turn my rib cage or my chest, the arms are going to move with it and that's what moves the club away from the target. So you just rotate, you drop a little bit and rotate. You'll have your own unique fingerprint on, like your golf swing, which is needed. Like we do need to keep some amount of quirks in every single golf swing that we see, because it keeps the spirit of the player in there, you can still see them right. Like it's not about how you need 12 degrees of flexion in the lead risk compared to where you started what and how. Where you started what and how do you manage that and control the ball from a playing perspective to your point. Justin, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah you know, when I look at the videos of your players, one thing that sticks out to me their strings. Their strings look flowy, it looks juicy. To me it's like there's something there.
Speaker 2:It's not hot, it's not like oh, it's like it's now I got you making noises, baby, let's go, let's go. Well, that's why, like when luke talks about woo, woo, tissue likes waves. So if you just think of a wave, every wave has a climb, it crests and it crash, crashes, right. So the woos are just the climb and the crash. The space between the woos is the area where you see, like like take lasasso, for example.
Speaker 2:So long the club just kind of floats up there, just kind of like chills for a second, then it goes back out. So he's very much like a woo woo type of a player. Right and again, tissue likes buffed off edges. That's how it likes to move. It doesn't like lightning bolts or hard edges. So it's not woo-woo because there's no space between the woos. We need that cresting time to elongate tissue. We need tension.
Speaker 2:This is the tensegrity model again. So when you see a lot of our players again like this is sorry, I'll go a different direction with this. If we all went to the driving range right now and every bay was filled, we could easily go. That's a new player, that's a shitty swing. Ooh, great golf swing. Oh damn, that's awesome. We could easily hand that out.
Speaker 2:But then the very next question of like why do you say that it's very hard to articulate that? I mean, if I had like a survey team of five different people and they all could kind of get they're going to give similar Ooh, that's a really good golf swing, that's not. You can pick that out really easy. And if I go right down on a sheet of paper, why you think that I'm going to get five different responses always swings it off the plane, that guy swings it on plane. Uh, that guy, that guy hits down on it. You're just going to get a bunch of random crap. That guy, that guy hits down on it. You're just going to get a bunch of random crap.
Speaker 2:But what it truly is is a tensegrity model. You can see the bounce, you see the woo, woo, woo bouncing and out of, like this stretch, shorten cycle, but it's not hard Right. And on top of that, full swing mechanics and our preference is a proximal to distal mapping. So the proximal stuff, your stuff closest to your center of mass as a human. So your rib cage, your pelvis, is what's going to move first, and the distal, the most distant away from your center. So your hands, the golf club would respond in both directions and we see that in a lot of transitions out of the greatest players in the world that the golf club would respond in both directions.
Speaker 2:And we see that in like a lot of transitions out of the greatest players in the world that the golf club is still swinging away Well, when they start to drop and move the other direction. So the proximal is already starting to go forward as the club still going back. That elongates tissue. That's the time in between the woos. You end up loading arm lines, you end up loading spirals and then you can collapse all that back down and that's the second woo. That's the hit, and so we can see it super easily. But it's really been hard for us to articulate for a long, long time and I always was curious about it myself, like why does that guy look right? Why does that guy not? Why? That's why?
Speaker 3:I want to stop you there. Mac O'Grady used to say this Great things look like there's a lot of time to make a lot of changes. Poor things look like they've got no time to make a lot of changes. And I had this discussion with Kelvin before I said do you agree with me when I say this Great swings look like there's a lot of time? From the moment the guy says, okay, I'm going to start my downswing to impact, it just kind of feels that there is a lot of time. And it's back to what you said about letting the spiral lines do their thing. The waves come in and go, but you can't rush waves. The waves will come in when they want to come in. They will crash when they want to crash. There is a sequence to it. Fine waves. You can't like, hey, let's compress it, Like it is what it is, and you just have to work with nature. And when I see poorer golfers 24, 18 handicappers it looks like, hey, before the club even sets, they want to rush it down.
Speaker 2:So I love what he's talking about with. I love what Justin was talking about with. I love what Justin was talking about with with these ways, on that topic of, of you know, energy management, if you will, it's kind of interesting to what. I was a kid, jesse, I read this Golf Digest article where just Davis loved the third. This is like way back in the day, dl3 was like the bomber. Back then you just send it, yeah, and it was this distance magazine. It's like okay, all things distance, like why, why do guys hit it far? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And he wrote that.
Speaker 2:There's this one sentence that he wrote that when I was a 14 year old kid I was like I don't understand what the heck he means. But he goes. When I try to hit it further, it feels like my golf swing takes twice as long and I was like dude. I read it as oh, your swing is slower. That makes no sense and I discredited it, right. But then when we look at like these different waves, like if you look at creek waves, they're small, right, and they're kind of abrupt, woo, woo.
Speaker 3:And not powerful at all.
Speaker 2:And not powerful at all, right, I can stand in a creek and have those like little ripples hit me in the knees and I'm like, okay, that's fine. Then if I go to San Diego and I stand in front of a wave, woo, woo, longer duration, bigger crest, bigger crash and then the one that I definitely don't want to be in front of is a tidal wave. Well, how long does a tidal wave take to climb, crest and crash, right? So these wavelengths are also a total indicator of, like how much energy I'm going to stop in their swing. Compared to driver duration time from start to stop it increases. The amount of time that it takes for them to actually swing is longer for driver than it is for wedge, even though it's faster with more energy. It's super interesting. It's super interesting.
Speaker 3:Interesting. Yeah, reini, I interrupted you on your global laws. The third one geometry.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that's a super interesting one. Okay, because there's no video here Most of the time. I like to show this, but I like to explain this Again. We kind of handed this at the beginning too. So geometry, meaning where the club is swinging in space, we play this really interesting sport because we're playing a stick sport, like baseball, but we're also playing a racket sport, like tennis at the same time. So where the racket is pointing at the strike is going to be a big indicator where that golf ball starts off, whereas, like in baseball, if where the bat is perpendicular to the strike is pretty much where that ball is going to start. So that's not the case in our sport. Like, where the shaft is pointing is not going to really have a direct relationship with where the golf ball is going to start. That's the, that's the racket, that's the club face. Okay, so separate discussion is all right.
Speaker 2:Um, by the way, big kudos to uh, uh, I believe his name, michael Jacobs. Um, alpha, gamma, beta, super cool stuff, right, like holy cow. They're actually describing the forces that we can put into the club in like three-dimensional space. It's like tremendous, um, and so, uh, definitely, would you know, if you're a golf nerd, listen to this definitely. Look up michael jacobs and it's a 3d. I can't remember what it's called. You might know, justin, but it's like 3d something, my other, whatever. Yeah, yeah, great book, great book, great read.
Speaker 2:Um, so the club, again the the club kind of defined by three different areas. Right, you've got the hub, which is pretty much where the hands connect on the grip, which the hub is just a fancy way of saying like the pivot point in the hands, like again where the hands connect. So that's like a release way of saying like the pivot point in the hands, like again where the hands connect, so that's like a release point. You've got the center of mass or the balance point of the club, which is, you know, towards the club head, just because that's obviously the club head has a lot of mass to it, so it kind of inches over there, like if you just held a club on your pointer finger and just let it balance their uh level to the ground. That's where the center of mass of the club would be. And then you've got the axial rotation, which is just face management. Okay, so if we looked at the club head or the bat into the club or the center of mass of the club and watch where it moved relative to the rib cage. It would be incredibly interesting to track it. So this is an interesting conversation.
Speaker 2:100% of high-level players shallow the golf club. 100% of them and I'm sure there's listeners on there that are screaming in their car right now BS, that's not true. Okay, so let me describe and define shallowing in the elite golf system. So if you look at every single player on tour, any tour that you want to look at, and you looked at them at position two P2 is where the shaft is level to the ground looked at them at position two P2 is where the shaft is level to the ground and then you also took in reference to that, their positioning at P6, which is where the shaft comes back down to level to the ground again right before the strike. So this is the away swing compared to the forward swing, where the shaft is level to the ground At P2, the shoulder axis relative to the target is going to be severely more closed relative to the target because the rib cage has turned, opened. Okay, in the away swing, because I'm turning the rib cage first and then now the golf club's level to the ground. So that axis, my shoulder axis is going to be open. For sake of argument let's say that it's open 30 degrees or relative to the target. We'll keep this language easy it's closed 30 degrees relative to the target and the shaft is relatively on plane Now if you went and compared them at P6, the shoulders are almost going to be zeroed out at the target now and the shaft will be organized appropriately and almost on that same shoulder axis at that point. So there's not one player on tour, not one, that has the golf club relative to their shoulder axis more, where the shoulders are more closed at p6 than they were at p, at p2, zero, zero.
Speaker 2:So we can say that very easily that the golf club is moving in relation to the shoulder axis or the ribcage's movement behind the player or on their trail side. The center of mass of the club moves more on the trail side rather than more in front of the player. So I'll throw a little heat at Justin Rose and Bryson DeChambeau when they are showing a map where they're feeling like the arms in the club are falling down the sagittal plane of the midline and they're describing it as the arms lower and then you turn. That's not what actually happens. Now you can map that and it might work well for certain players, totally, totally can understand that. But what actually happens is not that High level players, at the top of their swing they're going to open up the rib cage and the shoulder axis and the golf club lays down behind that and moves onto their trail side to get their arm line loaded. The golf club shallowed out so they can hit it from the inside. 100% of players do that.
Speaker 2:So the geometry and again I'll just throw out I like anatomical terms because it's precise but in essence what the club head, the center of mass of the club, is doing with high-level players, is in the away swing the club head moves up the sagittal plane and then in transition it moves along the coronal plane. The sagittal plane is this glass sheet that would cut me in half. This plane that would cut me in half from my left side of my body to the right side of my body, just saws me right in half. So club just goes up that in the backswing in general and then the coronal plane is perpendicular to that. It would be and I'm saying really looking at the rib cage or the axis of the shoulders that plane that would cut me in half, from my anterior space to my posterior space or from front to back. It's perpendicular to the sagittal plane.
Speaker 2:In that transition the golf club moves down the coronal plane, whether the player actually recognizes it or not or describes it in that way. That's what's actually happened. So when you're looking at the golf swing again from a proximal to distal mapping is what we prefer. The player would turn their rib cage away from the target Club's not doing a whole lot to start off, and once I've turned it away, the club's now swung away. I can now swing it up the sagittal plane, so it goes up in front of me and then from there it's the same thing. It's a proximal map in the forward swing. So I'd start to rotate my rib cage in the forward swing towards the target as the club head lays down on the coronal plane and now I'm in delivery. So that's the general shape of where the golf club moves in space for every single high level player.
Speaker 3:Honor and the poor player. Instead of moving the hands up the sagittal plane, they want to move the hands back on the transverse plane. Because why? It's the backswing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, the backswing, and what's so easy for high-level players? They'll lead arm adduct, which means that they just take the golf club and run it back there with no turn. They end up turning a little bit, so now the club's actually stuck back behind them. They know the force shouldn't keep going that way, so they'll end up lifting it. So now where's all the energy go? It's going up and over the plane and now I've got the forces in the club way whacked out. That's why we see over the top moves on almost every single newer player, because the mapping in their mind is wrong. They're trying to swing the golf club away, but how they're doing that is just by shoving the arms across. It's a distal map rather than a proximal map. If I turned it away and then picked it up, that's a different way of moving the golf club away from the target.
Speaker 3:And two elite players come to mind with the hands over the top swing Matt Fitzpatrick, you mentioned earlier, and Bruce Letsky. But they have an additional shallowing move that most 24, 36 handicappers will never be able to figure out on their own.
Speaker 2:Yep, you see the same thing out of Nancy Lopez, raymond Floyd. They've got very similar actions there but they're still able to slot it. So, whatever delivery, p5, p6, one of that area where I'm loaded up or I'm ready to hit that relationship of ribcage or shoulder axis and where the club is generally positioned, we're going to see a lot of very similar looks from high-level players, some of them again Lasasso, I mean, his ass is way the hell back there. Then you got guys like Phil Mickelson where they're kind of shoving their frigging pelvis up towards the golf ball. But the same relationship of rib cage to golf club that balance out that marriage is going to be very similar across all platforms in high level golf.
Speaker 3:Do you teach Lasasso?
Speaker 2:No, I do not. So Lasasso is with who's that guy? Own your Game Golf Chase, chase, chase. Duncan, exactly yes.
Speaker 3:I thought you might be able to help us out. I want to know where Lasasso gets his shorts from.
Speaker 2:Oh dude, I mean, if I had tree trunks like that too, I'd be wearing them.
Speaker 3:daisy dukes man looking good so you know you talked about geometry for your swing philosophy. Do you have general swing classifications? I, I'm guessing not.
Speaker 2:So we use swinger versus hitter, for sure, but it's not in golfing machine terminology. So we'll have and we're really differentiating that between like two different styles of how players are closing down the face relative to the target, because at the end of the day, you do need to close down the face, so are you? Are you closing it down with, uh, primarily through the arms and their rotation, the arms and hands and their rotation, or are you doing that more with the chest rotation to be able to close that golf club down? So think of, yeah, like it's like Hovland versus Jimmy Walker, right, jimmy Walker is a swinger in our terminology at the league golf schools, where Hovland is a hitter in our terminology.
Speaker 3:I want you to talk to our listeners about your concept of the passive and the active release. A lot of people are very confused about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah for sure. So active release, meaning I am actively sending the center of mass of the golf club in a particular direction, actively. So we go into Jacobs. This is a negative alpha active release. So again, and that's like the coronal plane, I'm sending that golf club down the coronal plane towards my trail side. That's where the club, the club head, is going. I definitely don't want that to come across like the handle I'm shoving over to my trail side and like pinning my arms into my posterior. That's like how to get stuck 101, so I can still have the arms and hands out in front of me in my anterior space but send the club head in that direction. So I can do that with some supination of the trail hand, I can do that with internal rotation of the lead arm, I can do that with, like going into appropriate lateral bend, like there's a lot of ways to send the golf club in that direction. But I'm actively sending it towards my trail side. So that's negative alpha force, that's a coronal plane hit.
Speaker 2:The passive release is angular force. So angular force I think the easiest way to describe angular force is tetherball. Like if I got that tetherball pole right here, that ball's hanging down on its string and I take that ball and I throw it. What ends up happening is the tether ball goes around that tether ball pole at a 90 degree clip with enough energy in it, like if I really send it, that thing is going around and around and around it. So if I move the tether ball pole on different axes right, if I tipped it down a little bit more and sent it, it was still the tether ball would go right around perpendicular to the axis of that tether bubble.
Speaker 2:And so inevitably what happens is in the golf swing, a lot of the reason for sending the club in a negative alpha force.
Speaker 2:The active release paired with the rotation of my chest is so that the club is on my trail side so I can continue to rotate the chest to square the golf club through the hit. But inevitably what ends up happening because I'm rotating my chest is I'm going to produce angular force, which is the club head whipping around my trunk. That's why the golf club goes low left, like this whole infatuation with the low left release. It's not because we're trying to make the golf club go low left with the arms. It's because if the club head is deep enough because of the negative alpha forces I'm putting into it as I'm turning and now I shoot that energy out and around me it's going to shoot around my trunk so it appears low left around my rib cage on the other side. So really the the active release is a negative alpha release and the passive release is because of angular force. It's the combo of negative alpha and angular.
Speaker 3:That's the entire forward swing and that's the geometry of the golf club relative to your rib cage you know, riley, if it's okay with you, I'm going to screen capture the video you did of passive and active release and put it on ig so that our listeners can actually see what we're talking about here yeah, and I think that would help a lot.
Speaker 2:Um, because describing this compared to just showing is going to be maybe difficult for some folks to see. But again, I mean, I describe this stuff every single day and, man, the looks that I get, you know. It's really funny because how we've described the forward swing for a number of years has really been the way that Rose describes it right you swing it up to the top of P4 and then you lower the arms and then you get to the burner and that can be a good map. I'm not saying that that's stupid. Please don't hear that. That's wrong.
Speaker 2:In fact, I don't think there's anything out there that's either right or wrong. Right, like good grief. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to match it up and articulate it to people for them to get better. Right so. But again, what I'm infatuated with is what actually is happening. Like we can measure access points pretty easily or get really close to it, um, and what the golf club is doing in relation to that, and that's where we start to gather like a better qualitative observation of what the best athletes on earth are doing, of what the best athletes on earth are doing.
Speaker 3:We are on the 90-minute mark now and I'm mindful of your time, riley. Don't want to take your time away from your family and your twins. What do you offer and where can our listeners find out more about you and your fantastic team?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, first off, justin and Jesse, thank you so much for having me on. Man, that was great to get to know you guys and great to chat with you and have these conversations. That's always the ball. So thank you so much, really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we do a lot here, right, and the biggest thing is we want to help people that want us. We've got a very robust virtual program where folks can either send in a swing that we call swing analysis we don't even chat with anybody, they just send in their swing, potentially can write in what they're feeling in their golf swing and then we respond back with about a 15 minute video that really is a deep dive on what we see in their action and a bunch of drills that can help them with that. We also offer Zoom sessions that are about 60 minutes in duration, which is great. We can work with people all over the country. I'll tell you, 97% of the players that I work with are all virtual students really, which is hilarious now, but we live in a day and age that we can actually do that.
Speaker 2:We do golf schools, three-day intensives, intensives that are custom built for one-on-one coaching, for players to fly in and work with us, obviously the geographic area in Phoenix and Denver and Pinehurst area, and then a really robust junior academy and offer all that on top of. We just developed an online academy called X Factor Golf that you can find on top of. We just developed an online academy called X Factor Golf that you can find on our website, elitegolfofcocoloradocom, and you can see all of our locations from EliteGolfOfCOcom and see all of our offerings right there. So that's what we do, baby.
Speaker 3:What about socials?
Speaker 2:YouTube IG handle Yep IG handle, I think is at Elite Golf Schools, is our handle for IG TikTok, I believe is the same at Elite Golf Schools, and then same thing for YouTube as well. So those are our main. I think that's.
Speaker 3:yeah, those are our only three social medias that we use, but yeah it is quite coincidental my handle is elite golf swing, so what a pleasure I know, I know, I love you even more, man. Good name baby calvin and I came up with that in 2010. It's like, hey, what do we call this? Yeah, let's just call it Elite Golf Swing, since it's based off the swings of great ball strikers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, that's awesome, so cool.
Speaker 3:Thank you once again for your time, Riley.
Speaker 2:Justin Jesse. Thank you guys, great to meet you guys. Appreciate you very much.